Guangzhou's Bogus Libations

This is the "cheap" Sanshui (Water Mountain) beer mentioned in the Danwei post below. Sanshui i s owned by Tsingtao which perhaps makes the deception below more potable. (Photo by kou.)
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An excerpt from a Danwei post:

Front Page of the Day

Fake beer, fake money, and fake milk powder

Posted by Eric Mu, September 11, 2008 4:48 PM

Dongguan Times
September 11, 2008

Police in Humen, Guangdong Province busted a fake beer producer yesterday, reports today's Dongguan Times. The article said that the producer replaced the labels and caps of cheap Shanshui-brand beer with those of the more expensive Tsingtao beer, creating three thousand fake Tsingtao beer bottles in a single day. The big photo on the front page shows the water tank which was used to remove the labels. [...]

I've only got empirical evidence for the following and I'm unwilling to name names or unveil venues (How unjournalistic of me) so regard the following as fiction. I've many friends in the bar business in Guangzhou and they all say the same thing about their alcohol distributors: "They ask us if we want the real version or the fake version." This is especially common with foreign liquors (Chivas Regal, Jack Daniels, JW Red Label, and Absolute--see this BBC article or this Guardian article), Chinese baijiu (Maotai--see this Opposite End of China post), and Chinese beer (Zhujiangchunsheng and Tsingtao--see above). Here's how it works: the savvy bar owner offers a particular bottle--and it seems to be only bottles--at an unusually low price. For example, a bottle 珠江纯生Zhujiangchunsheng (Pearl River Draft) sells for 20 RMB, which seems like a good deal. And it is, for the 老板laoban (owner), who profits another kuai or more on each sale. A real Zhujiang Draft costs around two RMB (wholesale), whereas a fake is around half of that. Hence, the cheap price. It works similarly with liquor, but here there's an additional variable. Bar owners also say that some distributors offer to buy back empty bottles of alcohol so that they can be sold to fake distillers for "refilling." (Of course, fake labels are used sometimes as well, like this photo posted by a Japanese whiskey aficionado.) Generally, counterfeits are low-end (i.e. cheap), "familiar brands" (which probably explains mixing them with wulong and green tea, not to mention you can't shelve the bottle for next time). Yet sometimes high-end products are just as spurious; the aforemtioned Guardian article above sites fakes of Hennessy, Remy Martin, and Martell. The fake alcohol is alchohol but the beer is usually a cheap brand loaded with formaldehyde and the liquor is often a substitute that's been distilled for merely weeks. Intense hangovers are common but death is rare-- more common in the consumption of domestic baijiu (see this Epochtimes' article). So what can you do, purchase from well-known chain store? Not according to this People's Daily article on Carrefour's "lesson." Frankly, there's not much you can do. You can be cool to the bartender and/or owner (common sense, right?), he or she might serve you one of the bona fide bottles. You can drink draft beers, which are probably genuine, as are obscure liquors. Or you can switch to bubble tea (珍珠奶茶Zhenjiunaicha). After all, swing sets are fun, right? And the counterfeit tapioca trade isn't flourishing. Or if all else fails, just remember that all of the above is fiction.